


Memento Mortem

by Decoder13



Category: Battle for London in the Air (Roleplay)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Bittersweet Ending, Character Death, Ensemble Cast, Just a whole lot of death coming up here people, Multi, Past Character Death, Return of the Obra Dinn AU, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Spooky Pocket Watch, Supernatural Elements, Tags will be added as characters and ships appear, You Have Been Warned, that said tho
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-19 08:48:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29623710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Decoder13/pseuds/Decoder13
Summary: 1808, Falmouth, England. Rebecca Tyler, Inspector of Insurance and Claims at the London Office of the East India Company, has been assigned to write an insurance report for a ship that has mysteriously returned to port devoid of life after being declared lost at sea five years prior. To this end, she is sent out to the ship armed with her wits, a near-empty journal from a mysterious ally, and a most extraordinary pocket watch. Her work soon shifts from a simple investigation of the ship's state and story to an increasingly personal exploration of the strange and terrible events that brought the ship's crew to a bad end.
Relationships: Andrew O'Rourke/Cordelia French
Kudos: 7





	1. Post-Mortem - Falmouth, 1808

“Company man woke me up,” the boatman grumbled as he rowed the small craft towards the looming vessel bobbing out on the dark water at the harbor’s mouth. “Said you’d need ferry to the Obra Dinn.” 

“That’s right,” Rebecca replied. 

The Obra Dinn was declared lost at sea five years ago. No wreckage was found, but no news or survivors surfaced, either. It sailed into port this week, devoid of life. All that was left was to send someone to assess the state of the ship and file the insurance report. That someone was to be Rebecca Tyler, Inspector of Insurance and Claims at the London Office of the East India Company. 

“It’s _not_ right, sending a young lady out on business like this,” the man said. “The sea shoulda never given ‘er up, and a lass like yourself is the last person what should be messing about with ‘er now.”

“I have no intentions of messing about,” Rebecca replied confidently. She steered the rowboat and watched intently as the vessel grew larger on the horizon. “I have a job to do, and I’ll do it. No less, no more.”

The boatman shook his head. “Not many eager for that job. Seems a bit late, if you ask.”

He was right. No one had been eager to inspect the silent ship that held her position without crew or anchor. But she had her own personal thirst for the truth, and that was enough to make her volunteer. Even now, her feelings about revisiting the fate of the Obra Dinn were… mixed.

“I didn’t.”

This shut that line of inquiry down, though he kept attempting small talk. Rebecca answered politely but wasn’t in a conversational mood. 

She did notice his eyes kept wandering over to the formidable chest that sat on a bench in the middle of the rowboat. She couldn’t blame him for that. Rebecca felt her own gaze drifting back to it again and again. It was only right to follow the instructions she’d received and wait to open the package until she was aboard. Still, she got an odd feeling about that chest. Highly irregular.

They were maneuvering alongside the ship when the boatman asked, “What’s in the box?” 

“I don’t know,” Rebecca replied. She brought her hands up to the pilot ladder dangling from the ship and gave it a tug. Felt sturdy enough. “Hoist it up in a few minutes.”

“Eh? How?”

“ _Carefully_ ,” Rebecca said, scuttling up the ladder and onto the main deck of the Obra Dinn.

The ship, at first glance, looked surprisingly mundane. There were signs of wear and tear in the rigging and along the deck, but Rebecca couldn’t assume they indicated any struggle. This vessel had been out in the elements for years. It was a miracle that it was still afloat, and damage could easily be attributed to weather or the lack of regular repairs. And that notwithstanding, the materials of the ship were in good condition. The wood hadn’t deteriorated as she’d expected after years of neglect. Benches, ropes, and debris sat loose on the deck. How had none of this been swept overboard in a gale?

Rebecca headed aft, towards the cabins. Most of them would have belonged to passengers, with the one furthest back being the captain’s. The log might still be there if she was lucky. Even if not, it was a good place to check for papers, official or personal, that could offer some insight.

The steps near the cabins should lead down to the gun deck. It wasn’t technically the best first place to check. There’d be no cargo or particular records. But that’s where the other officers’ cabins would be, and it took everything in her not to head down immediately and see if she could pick out the mates’ cabins, take a look, and see if…

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. No. She’d stick to procedure, at least for now. It would be appropriate - expected! - that she inspect the crew cabins in time. Captain’s first.

On the deck, 20 feet back from the captain’s door, was a human skeleton.

The bones had long since been cleaned of flesh, though the clothes that clung to them were in the same unsettlingly good condition as every other material on this ship. The cuffs were still neatly folded and buttoned. There was a bullet hole through the skull.

Rebecca breathed in sharply. Murder. Whatever else had happened here, someone had been shot right between the eyes.

“Hoy! It’s too heavy!” The boatman’s voice carried faint but clear up onto the main deck. 

“What is it?” Rebecca called, pivoting away from the remains and rushing over to the railing. “Are you alright?”

“It’s too heavy,” the boatman called back. He slapped the chest loudly with his hand. “Take it yourself or open it here.”

Rebecca sighed. Admittedly, she’d marvelled at the weight of herself when she’d first been given the package. What was in there, an assortment of sundry cannonballs?

She walked back to the pilot’s ladder and scrambled down to the rowboat. There, it only took a minute of fumbling with the chest’s entirely too many latches to open it with a satisfying _click_.

Inside was nothing to justify the chest’s weight: just a leather-bound journal and a small black velvet pouch. The journal’s cover was weathered but of good quality, and there was an ink stain in the bottom left corner. The fabric of the pouch had settled around a small circular object resting in its center. Rebecca picked up the journal and turned it over in her hands. It had no title or markings on its cover or spine.

The boatman scoffed. “What is it, then? A bit o’ light reading?” 

“Important notes,” Rebecca replied before she knew whether that was true. “I’ll leave the chest here. Don’t disturb it. Judging by the weight of it, there could be another compartment.”

“As you say, m’am,” the man replied. He pulled a blanket up from under his bench, drew it up around his shoulders, and produced a small flask from under his coat. “I’ll get right comfortable here, and you can do that job of yours. Just… don’t be too long about it. Look at the sky. The weather could turn any moment now, I can feel it.”

Rebecca slid the journal and pouch into the satchel slung over her shoulder. “I’ll take exactly as long as I need, no more or less,” she said as she began to scale the pilot’s ladder for the second time. “But I’ll also exercise prudence. Thank you.”

The boatman muttered something indistinct as Rebecca got her footing back on the main deck. 

From there, she headed to an overturned bench near the railing and righted it so she could take a seat. Right now, she had a large deserted vessel, one dead body and counting, and at least one murder. If she had something else to work with here, she wanted to know that right away.

Rebecca slid the book out of her satchel and opened it to the first page.

There was a small ink illustration of the ship she was now on. Surrounding it was a full title page, as if this were not a journal but a novel she’d find in her father’s library:

**_Return of the Obra Dinn_ **

**_A Catalogue of Adventure and Tragedy_ **

**_1808_ **

The year listed was this year, she noted, not 1803, the year the ship embarked. Strange. She flipped the page and was met with something of an explanation, for a certain value of the word “explanation.” The page was titled “ _ **PREFACE**_ ” in a heavy, elegant type. Below, the following message, possibly from the chest’s mysterious sender, though she hesitated to presume:

> **_"I trust that you now find yourself aboard the Obra Dinn. I expected this day to come, and my every intention was to tell the ship’s strange tale within the pages of this book._ **
> 
> **_Regrettably, circumstances have thwarted all of my own efforts to do so, and I have only been able to produce the basic outline that follows. The ship will not have me back, but if you are reading this, and you have followed the instructions enclosed with this package, she will have you. I thus humbly request that, in the line of your duties to the Company, you also fill out these pages and bring a measure of peace to her and to those who sailed aboard her._ **
> 
> **_Your presence on the Obra Dinn is critical. I leave the discovery of her fate and the completion of this book in your hands._ **
> 
> **_The next few pages will seem bewildering at first. All will make sense in time._ **
> 
> **_Use the pocket watch enclosed to determine the identity and fate of everyone aboard. I have organized the book into “chapters,” as much as any set of events that occurs in life can be. Complete each chapter accurately and return the book by guaranteed post to the address from which it was sent._ **
> 
> **_The “Bargain” chapter will remain unknown to you. It is the only chapter I possess all the details of myself, but I have elected to keep them private for now._ **
> 
> **_Sincerely,_ **
> 
> **_Irving Suttler"_ **

Rebecca blinked. There was a sincere plea in this “preface,” and of course she wished for the same thing as its writer: complete and accurate answers about what occurred here, and not only to ensure that an accurate insurance report would be filed. The name “Irving Suttler” looked vaguely familiar, though she couldn’t place it yet. Clearly he had his own ties to the ship’s final voyage, not unlike her.

She flipped through the rest of the book and found mostly blank pages. There were useful things here and there, like a complete list of what she presumed (by comparison to an earlier record she’d been given by the company) to be the final list of passengers and crew, and several sketches of life aboard (signed C.A., she noted). But Mr. Suttler wasn’t joking. Most of the book was empty. What was she supposed to do with that beyond what she could have done anyway? Of course she’d try to fill it in to put the poor man’s mind at ease; it was incidental to her investigation anyway. But there wasn’t-

The pocket watch. He mentioned a pocket watch. Rebecca realized that must be the shape in the black pouch.

She slid the watch out of its pouch and of her satchel and set it down atop the open book on her lap. The grim design of the lid immediately struck her. A white, opalescent skull was set into a circle of black stone, which in turn was set in a ring of intricate silver scrollwork with 12 notches. 

Opening the lid revealed a perfectly ordinary watch face and a two-word inscription: _Memento Mortem_ . Rebecca was an educated woman who’d retained much of her Latin from grammar school. _Memento mori_ \- “remember you must die” - was a common enough inscription, but _Memento Mortem_ \- “Remember Death” - was a less common form. It felt less like a personal suggestion and more like a general command.

Rebecca snapped the watch closed, slipping its chain around her neck. It was clearly important, somehow, and it wouldn’t do to misplace it. She shut the book and put it away. There was no more reason or room to tarry. Time to revisit the captain’s quarters, and the grizzly scene that paved the way to them.

As she approached the human remains this time, she felt a sudden heat press against her chest. Not an uncomfortable or dangerous heat. Just a warmth that stood out clearly against the chill of the wet, foggy pre-dawn. Looking down, she immediately saw the source: the watch.

The eyes of the skull had shifted from black stone to a soft, glowing gold. When she brought a hand up to the timepiece, she felt it trembling, more like a leaf in the wind than a sturdy metal object. And it… _tugged._ Not violently, no, or even strongly, but enough for her to feel the pull at her hand and at her neck, forward towards the bones.

Well, what the hell? She followed.

When she got within a couple feet, the watch shook so violently that she feared it might tear itself apart. She took a deep breath and opened it for a second time.

 _I… I can see them,_ a man’s voice said from slightly above and just ahead of her. Rebecca looked up but saw no one. _I see them_ , the voice repeated, stronger this time, as if he’d just convinced himself of something. _Look._

Ironically, that was when everything went dark.


	2. The End, Part 1 - 1803?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A sudden darkness alive with sound. Then, utter chaos - and utter stillness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CURRENT ID COUNT
> 
> \- 1 Full Fate Solved
> 
> \- 2 Crew Members Identified
> 
> \- 4 Individuals Seen in Flashbacks
> 
> \- 1 Unidentified Crew Member
> 
> \- 1 Unidentified Passenger

Despite being plunged into absolute darkness, Rebecca was sure she was still conscious. Her legs hadn’t given out. The watch was still in her hand. And she could still hear. The sound of the sea changed, and quick, heated voices rang out around her.

“Captain!” a woman shouted. The accent wouldn’t be out of place in respectable London society, though with a twang that was hard to place. “Open the door.”

“Kick it in,” a man suggested. He spoke with a thick Irish brogue and a tremor of anxiety. “Change o’ plan. I can just kick-”

“Hush,” another man interrupted. Another voice, another accent, this one… French, maybe? Italian? It was hard to tell from one word.

“Open the door,” the woman repeated. “Or we’ll break it down and take more than those shells.”

Rebecca heard the click of a pistol and the slam of a door not far in front of her. “You bastards may take,” a third man spat, “exactly what I give you!”

A gunshot rang towards her. There was a dull _clatter_ behind it that didn’t sound quite like a shot. She flinched instinctively, but what else could she do about an invisible bullet fired from an invisible gun? One of the men shouted.

Then a world burst back into existence all around Rebecca, though it wasn’t the same one she’d been in when she’d opened the watch. 

Yes, she was still on the deck of the Obra Dinn, still standing where she had been standing, still untouched and unharmed. But, when she first opened her eyes, it was all she could do to swallow down a reflexive scream.

Framed by the now-open doorway of the captain’s cabin not ten feet in front of her was a sharp-eyed, expressionless man with a pistol grasped in his outstretched hand. His finger had already smashed down on the trigger, and Rebecca could _see_ the trail of a bullet from out of the weapon’s mouth with surreal clarity. But she was unharmed. It took her a second to register that, despite the bullet trail that led right to her, she was entirely uninjured. 

The moment after she ascertained that she was alive, she realized that it might be, in part, because nothing before or around her was moving.

The man didn’t blink. His arm didn’t so much as quiver. The ship beneath her no longer rocked to and fro with the motion of the water. The bullet trail that was too solid hung in the air like a dark gossamer threads. A light rain was falling, she realized, but not one drop touched her, and every drop still in the air stayed frozen in mid-fall, reflecting the path of the bullet off of a hundred liquid crystals. The moment was chaos, and absolute stillness.

 _Behind you_ , a voice said from over her shoulder. It took her a moment to set it apart from the voices she’d heard in the darkness. This was the voice from the instant before that, from when she’d opened the watch. _She’s behind you_.

Rebecca’s breath caught in her throat. “What did you do?” she whispered.

No response.

“I’m staring down the barrel of a living stanger’s gun in the middle of a rain that isn’t falling, above an ocean that isn’t moving, aboard a ship where everyone but me is dead.” Rebecca clutched the watch tightly in one hand, prepared to give it a tug. It was the watch that triggered this somehow; she couldn’t say how, but she’d have to be an idiot to deny it at this point. She could only hope that her voice channeled the resolve she meant more than the creeping fear she felt. “Answers, now, or I rip the damn thing off my neck and throw it into the-” 

_No_ , the voice interrupted. _No_ . _You can’t. It’s… you’re alright._

“Alright?” Rebecca glanced down to the spindly black trail that led straight to her. “ _Alright?_ A bullet just flew right through my neck, by the looks of it.”

 _It’s not how it looks_.

“Weren’t you the one who told me to ‘look’ in the first place?” Rebecca shot back. She didn’t let go of the watch, though she let her grip loosen slightly. There was a hesitance about the mysterious voice that felt less than all-knowing, and a desperation that she couldn’t bring herself to read as malicious.

 _It’s what I can see_ , the voice replied. _You can see what I can see, now. It’s not what_ **_is_ ** _. It’s only what_ **_was_ ** _._

What was? What was what? Unless… “You mean, what happened on the Obra Dinn? Five years ago?”

_Is that the ship? The Obra Dinn?_

Rebecca nodded before realizing that perhaps the mysterious voice couldn’t see her do so. “It is,” she said. “How could you know” - she motioned vaguely with her freehand towards the frozen man and the frozen bullet-echo and the frozen rain - “all of _this_ , but not where you are?”

 _I know I’m on a ship._ The voice fell silent for a moment. _Before that, I was asleep. And before_ **_that_ ** _… nothing._

“Who’s this?” she asked anyway, motioning her head towards the man with the gun. It was so easy for the voice to say he remembered nothing. She wasn’t sure how much she trusted that.

 _I told you, I don’t know! I’ve never seen the bastard before_ . The longer it spoke, the more the voice shifted from tenuous and mystical to distinctive and human. _But I can see him now, and because you have the watch, you can see him, too. I don’t know what happens to either of us if you take it off now. Nothing good, probably. Please,_ **_don’t_ ** _._

Rebecca closed her eyes and was slow to open them again. The paused moment was still right where it had been. “Alright. Say I believe you. What then?”

 _Turn around_ , the voice repeated.

Rebecca turned around this time. She didn’t expect to see the source of the voice there, and she was right not to. There were only three figures behind her - one for every other voice she’d heard before the scene faded into view.

But now there was no pile of bones and fabric strewn on the deck in front of her. In their place was now a dark-haired woman wearing the bones’ neatly cuffed shirt and officer’s jacket.

The dead woman was paused in the middle of a fall straight back to the deck. There was an unused pistol in a holster around her waist and a hatchet falling backwards from her hand. A fresh bullet hole sat between eyes that were still wide open in shock. Behind her was a red-bearded giant of a man, his height and build apparent even as he leaned forward to catch her. His expression rested in the split second before shattering grief or mad rage, or possibly both. There was a knife tucked into a sheath on his belt. 

Off to the dead woman’s other side was a man with olive skin and a mop of dark curly hair. His jacket and sash didn’t look like those of a sailor. He wore no shoes. A wall blocked his view of the man with the gun, but the angle at which he stood and the path of his gaze seemed to be pointed right at the killer anyway. 

Rebecca looked away from the scene of fledgling grief before her and turned back to the door of the captain’s cabin. She’d passed through the bullet’s path and the rain untouched and undetected. Despite her presence immediately in front of the gun, the bullet had hit its mark instead: the same mark, Rebecca began to accept, that it had hit five years ago. Could she pass through everything here? She walked towards the open captain’s quarters but came up against an invisible wall an inch back from the man in the doorway.

 _I can’t see past him_ , the voice said. _Past him, everything is blank._

“Right. Ghostly visions of murder most foul have a radius of roughly fifteen feet. Good to know.”

_I don’t think the rule is based on feet._

“But do you actually _know_ the rules?” Rebecca asked.

A pause. _I think I know how to get you out of here alright when you’re through._

She chewed on that answer for a moment. “Good enough.” She set the watch back down against her chest and slid the journal out of her satchel.

 _Are you... taking a break to read a book?_

“Often as not,” Rebecca replied, “but not at the moment, no. I need to check something.” She opened the book and flipped a few pages in, past the preface, to the sketches of the Obra Dinn’s passengers and crew. Her sight slid intently back and forth over the drawings. She knew what she was looking for, and it wasn’t long before she found it.

One sketch depicted a human figure hanging from a mast by their waist. Their face was covered. On the deck across from them was a firing line of four crew members. In the bottom left was a woman held back by a crewman and a passenger beside her. Another man looked away from the figure, head bowed, maybe in prayer. Much of the crew was present, along with a few other passengers. In the top left corner, someone had written “Justice at Sea.”

It was a grim scene. That said, while its subject was surely something she must deal with in time, Rebecca had sought it out for another reason: the cluster of officers standing on the deck.

Sure enough, the elegant, uniformed man standing at the head of what she assumed to be the ship’s mates was the same man standing in the doorway before her. The captain. The captain had shot a fellow officer at point blank range.

More than that, only one of the four mates standing near the captain was a woman, and that woman was the one she’d just seen die. Rebecca could approximate her rank by her dress. In the firing line, his musket angled wildly off from his supposed target, was the red-bearded seaman. And the man with the bowed head had the same curly hair and style of dress as the one standing behind the wall.

Rebecca flipped back to the crew list. It took only a few seconds of purposeful searching to find two listings of interest: **Vernon Massey, Captain** , and **Cordelia French, Second Mate**.

 _It’s time to go_ , the voice said. Its source was beside her now but remained as invisible as ever. _You’ve found… it. Whatever_ **_it_ ** _is._ Rebecca heard the pages of the book rustle, and for an instant it grew warm in her hands much as the pocket watch had against her chest. The heat was gone in a second. _Captain Massey was…_ The voice trailed off.

“So you remember him after all.” Rebecca snapped the book shut and took a last look at Massey’s face. There was so little there. He’d just killed his own Second Mate, armed with a hatchet and a gun, but there was no sense of emotion or pain or fear in his expression. There wasn’t anything. She had to look away more quickly than she’d have liked.

 _Not yet?_ It was clearly a question more than a statement. 

“Excellent. Yes, I know _exactly_ what that means, clearly.” She sighed as she put the book away. “No. No, I’m sorry. You don’t seem much less confused than I am.”

 _Turn around again,_ the voice replied, a little warmer than it had been thus far.

Rebecca followed the voice’s instruction and saw the world taper off into… not darkness. No, into a blur of shape and color and substance and space that grew thinner and lighter until it became a pure white expanse. A bright, absolute nothingness. In the midst of that, straight back from the place where Second Mate French fell, was an open door.

_There’s your way back, I suppose._

“You expect me to jump into the void for an ‘I suppose’?”

 _I got you here,_ the voice replied. _The least I can do is get you back. This_ **_is_ ** _your way back._

Rebecca took a deep breath and clenched her fists. There was a growing confidence in that last statement that was infectious. “Then here goes nothing.” With that, she strode up to the Door in the Nothingness, closed her eyes, and stepped through.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FULL FATES SOLVED IN THIS CHAPTER:
> 
> \- Second Mate Cordelia French, Shot by Captain Vernon Massey
> 
> \-----
> 
> Also, some rules in regards to tags, spoilers, character roster, and Murder Rules now that the story of the ship is actually unfolding:
> 
> \- I will not add characters to the fic's tags until they're identified by Rebecca in-story, even as obvious as some of them may be to the fandom XD
> 
> \- I will not add ships to the fic's tags until A) both members of the ship have been identified in-story and B) some "on-screen" evidence of the ship has appeared in physical evidence or in a flashback sequence.
> 
> \- Any character from any iteration of LITA, RR, MotRD, or EM or from an AU thereof could show up in this story. 
> 
> \- Deaths of other writers' characters will be treated as significant and written as much as possible with the same kind of tone set by existing fics and death scenes for them. When another writer's character from any setting dies, they'll be given all due respect and importance and attention to the best of my ability.
> 
> \- As you can see by the first fully solved fate, anyone can die, and most characters will. This is an AU with a huge ensemble cast in which the name of the game, along with Slow-Burning Mystery and Exploration of Supernatural Bullshit Not Built to Be Delved Into This Deeply, is Spectacular Death Scenes. It's a low-stakes side AU that doesn't currently even exist outside of this fic to write some mystery and murder and mayhem and tragedy in, and it is utterly and completely divorced from any canon setting or other continuity. Because you can't have an epic murder mystery without Epic Murders ;)
> 
> \- That said - SPOILERS - this whole thing is built on the assumption that there's ultimately a handful of survivors. Unless otherwise requested, my goal is to make at least one character written by each LITA author survive. 
> 
> \- To all LITA writers: If there are one or more characters of yours you absolutely do not want to see die, or any particular kinds of deaths that would detract from the fun of this fic for you and/or cause you any kind of discomfort, please let me know. Building a solid, spooky murder mystery is of course important, but it's WAY less important than the enjoyment and happiness of the entire lovely LITA family!


	3. A Most Extraordinary Pocket Watch - Falmouth, 1808

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CURRENT ID COUNT
> 
> \- 1 Full Fate Solved
> 
> \- 2 Deaths Viewed
> 
> \- 2 Crew Members Identified
> 
> \- 5 Individuals Seen in Flashbacks
> 
> \- 2 Unidentified Crew Members
> 
> \- 1 Unidentified Passenger
> 
> \- 1 Terrible Beast???

On the other side of the door, Rebecca found herself back on the deck of an empty, silent Obra Dinn that rocked upon the sea like it was supposed to. She was standing about 15 feet back from the dead woman now. That made sense, she supposed. This _is_ about where stepping through the door in the vision would have put her. Around her, the rest of the ship had come back into reality. Everything was as silent and deathly as it was supposed to be.

“Well, you were right about getting us back,” Rebecca muttered, taking a moment to get used to the motion of the ship again. “I don’t suppose you have anything more to say for yourself in regards to that little excursion, do you?”

No answer.

Rebecca put one hand over the pocket watch. It was cold and still.

“And I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you sooner,” she added quietly. “I don’t know what you do or don’t know, or how you do what you do, but I do think you just wanted me to do what I needed to do before I could go. I’d have noticed if that door was there the first time I looked at the corpse.” 

She lifted the watch and held it up closer to her face, so she could look the skull in the eyes. They weren’t glowing. No voice replied, and she let it slip from her fingers as the chain tugged softly against her neck. Here she was, momentarily convinced that she’d been shown a murder done half a decade ago by a magical watch, then trying to talk to the watch. _Apologizing_ to the watch! Ridiculous! What could be believed so recently now felt less believable by the second.

Rebecca needed a moment to sit down, to gather her thoughts. She headed for the bench she’d turned upright and took a seat. Then, on a hunch, she tried opening the watch back up. 

_It’s quite alright_ , the voice of the watch said. Now it sounded like he was beside her, though of course no one was there. _I don’t think I’d have believed me if I were you. This is just… I don’t think I’ve done this before. I know that I’m supposed to, that it’s my purpose, but I don’t know how I got here or how I got it. And maybe I_ **_could_ ** _have been more forthright about things._

Rebecca cracked a slight smile. “Hmm, you really think so?” she asked, sarcastic, but good-naturedly so. She hadn’t anticipated how happy she’d be to hear the watch again.

_Asks the woman who came here to stare at corpses for her own inscrutable purposes._

“Inscrutable? It’s my job. I’m an insurance inspector.”

 _Ah, an insurance inspector_. The voice paused for a moment. _That still sounds fairly inscrutable._

Rebecca rolled her eyes. “I’m here to figure out what happened on the ship, the state of those aboard and of her inventory, you know. Account for equipment and cargo, assess damages, and get final wages to the estates. And then write a nice neat report all about it.”

_That sounds like an awful lot of paperwork. Maybe a bit more mundane than I expected from the intrepid detective. All the accounting that entails does sound soothing, though._

“My apologies, but we can’t _all_ be magical talking objects with miraculous powers,” Rebecca retorted. She considered closing the watch for a moment before deciding against it. Instead, she set it back down carefully against her chest without closing the lid. Then she slid the journal and a pencil out of her satchel.

 _No offense intended,_ the watch added belatedly. _I wasn’t even joking about the accounting bit._

“Oh, so you’re a magic watch _and_ an accountant, too? Truly, a man of many gifts.” She opened the journal and flipped it back open. On the page with the sketch of the mysterious execution, she penciled in the name “Cordelia French” under the sketch of the lady officer, and “Vernon Massey” under the sketch of the Captain. 

_There’s another reason you’re here, though. I can tell,_ the voice continued. _You feel too much for it to just be the job._

Rebecca continued flipping to the list of passengers and crew in silence, page by page. “I knew a couple of the crew,” she finally replied. “I still didn’t _want_ the job, but I took it for them.” At the end of each row of the list was an empty column that she’d supposed was for general notes. But now she looked at the heading of the column and saw a single word printed there: “FATE”.

_Oh. I’m… sorry._

“Thank you. It was years ago now, but I suppose I still needed the closure more than I thought.”

In the empty column, next to Cordelia French, Second Mate from England, Rebecca scribbled, “Shot by Captain Vernon Massey,” and tried not to think too much.

As she lifted the pencil from the page, the pages of the book began to rattle, then turn by themselves, flipping faster and faster. Rebecca saw the title of the book’s final chapter flash by her: “X. THE END”. Then the book was open to a page that filled itself in as she watched.

In a few seconds, the sketched face of the Cordelia French looked up from the page. Her name and her manner of death were penciled in beside it. On the opposite page was a transcript of her final conversation, a sketch of the scene of her death, and a map marking where she’d died.

 _I’ll try to be of assistance_ , the watch said. _You need to know what happened to them, for their sake, and for yours. I’m flooded with more glimpses of their fates than I can bear alone. Maybe I was sent to you for a reason? Maybe, together, we’re the only ones who can_ _bring a measure of peace to the Obra Dinn and to those who sailed aboard her._

Rebecca stared down at the page. “Did you read the note at the front?”

 _No. I simply_ **_know_** _, in my core, what our purpose here is_ . A pause. Then, a sigh. _Yes, I read it all just now._

She almost laughed at the sudden levity. Almost. “Do you know this Irving Suttler fellow?”

 _I… don’t know if I do. I’m starting to think that there…_ **_was_ ** _something, before I opened my eyes here. For a moment, back there, I was… I was so_ **_sure_ ** _that I had some opinion on the Captain, though I don’t know where I got it from. The names in this book look familiar, like a dream I’ve had before but keep forgetting a second after I wake up._

“But, whether you remember or not, you’ll show me what happened to someone if I find their remains and open the watch,” Rebecca said.

_Right._

“And you remember a little more each time I figure out who I’m looking at and what happened.”

_Possibly._

“So, as I find more remains, and view more deaths, I’ll be able to piece together who they are based on the records I have, and you’ll confirm if I’m right, because you’ll remember.”

_Now, wait a moment, that would be convenient, to be sure, but I still don’t know if I can actually-_

“Then let’s test this out, shall we?” Rebecca interrupted. She closed the journal and put it away. 

_I’m not sure if there’s anything to test,_ the watch replied. He suddenly sounded agitated, more so than he’d been thus far. _Do you even know where another body_ **_is_** _?_

“Not for certain, no,” she conceded, getting up and making for the captain’s quarters. “But it looked like a small group entered the captain’s quarters ready for a fight, and the captain killed one of their number in front of them. I think it’s safe to assume that they charged for the captain next once his quarters were open. So I suspect we’ll find the results of that confrontation on the other side of his door.”

The watch was quiet as Rebecca walked to the captain’s door. This time, she steered clear of Second Mate French. It was strange to know this woman she’d never met so certainly, and to think of the bones as “Second Mate French” rather than “the skeleton.” 

By the time she reached the door, she was prepared for the watch’s eyes to blaze the instant she stepped inside. She was less prepared, though, for the timepiece to hum before she even touched the door.

 _There’s a man just on the other side_ , the watch said. As compared to his teasing and conjecturing and protestations earlier, his voice was nearly devoid of emotion now. _There’s… more than one man. This place_ **_thrums_ ** _with death. Be ready for what we’ll see._

Rebecca was starting to pick up on a change in his tone between how he spoke in conversation and how he spoke leading into the flashbacks. Once they came upon a body, the personality and fire behind him almost… _dulled_. He became a mouthpiece. A cold shiver ran through her at that thought, but she couldn’t yet place why.

“Are _you_ ready?” Rebecca asked as she grasped the doorknob.

 _I… I have to be_ , the watch replied.

“Then I am, too.” Rebecca took a deep breath and flung the door wide open. She surprised herself by not shrieking, though she did gasp as one of her hands flew up to her mouth in shock.

Five years ago, the scene before her would have been absolute carnage. Directly in front of her was a skeleton, face down, with one hand reached out towards the door. Part of the skull had caved in, and she spotted a knife sitting among the remains of its back and torso. Past that skeleton, just a few feet away, were wooden planks and assorted debris presumably from the large hole burst through the ceiling above. A couple of feet further back from the rubble was the skeleton of a second person, dressed in work clothes, who’d died facing up. The center panel of the long cabin window behind them both was entirely shattered. The railing beyond it was broken, and a swatch of white fabric stained the warm, deep brown of blood was caught upon the splinters and waving gently in the breeze. It looked almost like a declaration of surrender.

All of this would have been plenty bad enough. But, up in the back right corner of the room, pinned to the ceiling by four jagged black spikes the likes of which Rebecca had never seen before, was part of a skeleton wrapped up in the captain’s uniform. A gun and the rest of the skeleton had long since dropped to the floor below.

“ _My god_ , what the hell is this?” Rebecca rasped, eyes wide in horrified awe.

 _The end,_ the watch replied. Rebecca expected to black out, but that didn’t make the sudden funnel of darkness taking over her vision much less startling. _This was the end. Look._

On cue, the dark spiral closed in on itself. All that remained were a wide black void, a weak, strained voice, and the scraping of nails and fabric against splintered wood.

“Liam,” the Irish-accented voice choked out, garbled, but still familiar. “‘Delia… ‘s done… ‘s safe… an’ we... tell 'em...”

“Shhhhhhhhhh,” either a reedy voice or the wind cooed.

All sound sputtered out as the world burst back into view. And the absolute carnage Rebecca had envisioned couldn’t lift a candle to what she saw. It wasn’t just that there was now fresh blood trailed throughout the cabin and out of the window. It wasn't that there was meat on the bones now, that now the young, blond-hair man behind the rubble had a slit throat that left his shirt matted to his chest with blood, that the red-bearded seaman crawling for the door had half his face smashed in and a knife sticking out of his back, or that the captain was pinned to the walls and ceiling by his limbs and dripping blood from a hole blown into his chest. It wasn’t even that all three pairs of blank, dead eyes were open and seemed trained on her. No. It was the fourth pair of eyes that held her fast where she stood.

Gently holding one of the red-bearded sailor's hands was what Rebecca could only describe as a monster.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you familiar with the game, yes, this chapter is where stuff *really* starts to go off the rails. Part of it is that I wanted to capture that early shock of suddenly being faced with a supernaturally tinged tableaux that happens about 20-30 minutes into the game via a corpse we're still not going to see for another few chapters. That didn't feel fair to obscure for a couple of weeks as opposed to half an hour in-game, right as you're let out of the tutorial area and into the main game. In Rebecca's 60-Part Murder Investigation from Hell, there are no tutorials. Only skellingtons. 
> 
> That said, I AM going to be following the basic story beats of the game, more so in a lot of other places than I am right here. But I'm also definitely bringing in extended LITA-verse elements to fill in gaps in the lore and letting the personalities, values, skills, and common arcs of our various lineups of characters influence precisely how things pan out ;)


	4. The End, Part 5 - 1803

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CURRENT ID COUNT
> 
> \- 1 Full Fate Solved
> 
> \- 2 Deaths Viewed
> 
> \- 3(?) Crew Members Identified
> 
> \- 5 Individuals Seen in Flashbacks
> 
> \- 1(?) Unidentified Crew Member
> 
> \- 1 Reveran Passenger

“What the bloody hell _is_ that thing?” Rebecca muttered, staring at the creature that held one of the red-bearded seaman’s hands. 

The eyes were wide and solid black, and there were more than two, but she focused on the two that were largest and most centered. The mouth looked mostly human, though with strange ridges on each side along the jaw. It had two arms with… hands, she supposed? They looked more like pincers with vestigial fingers. Several other arms and legs poked out from its hips and shoulders and tapered off into sharp spikes. 

But the basic _shape_ of the thing was still distinctly, terribly _human_. Human face covered in eyes that shouldn’t be there. Human torso suspended from limbs that were all wrong.

What _was_ it? There was no way this could be what happened on the ship. Impossible. No. Absolutely not. She turned away abruptly

“Is this a joke?” she asked. “Because it’s not the least bit funny.”

 _I can only see what happened here,_ the watch replied. His voice was still all business, but there was a tremor beneath it that betrayed his own uncertainty about the scene. Oddly enough, that inclined Rebecca to trust it more rather than less. _This is what I see. Now you see it, too._

“This is harder to believe than something I’m seeing with my own eyes should be,” Rebecca said. She steeled her resolve and looked back to the dead sailor and the monster beside him. There _was_ inarguably a corpse by the door to match the sailor here. But there was no hint of the more… _fantastical_ elements of the scene. “I shouldn’t be able to see this. The captain shooting a mutineer, I can believe, but there’s nothing at all to tell me that this is…” Her voice trailed off as she took a closer look at the monster’s strange, split, spindly limbs. 

At the very ends of the limbs (arms? legs?), the skin transitioned from a warm olive to thin, jagged black lines. Rebecca glanced back up to the dead captain pinned to the ceiling. She was right. The texture and look of the spikes holding him matched this creature’s limbs.

She _had_ seen some evidence in the present place and year that the monster had been there. The realization sent the hair on the backs of her arms standing straight back. How many of the events in this room were going to feature this thing?

“Did it kill the captain?” Rebecca asked quietly. “Is this supposed to be the whole answer? One second it looks like a mutiny, and the next no, a beast from the pits of hell just jumped down through the ceiling and stabbed everyone?” Even as she spoke, she became increasingly convinced that this wasn’t quite the truth. For the moment, she had to entertain the possibility that what she saw was real, in some sense. But some critical piece was still missing.

Why would a creature with spikes it could impale a man on stab someone with a knife? Why would it have shown up _right at this moment_ when tensions within the ship were already plenty to drive the crew to violence against each other? What was it here for? The corpses were left where they’d fallen with their clothes intact. If the monster had wanted to eat them or to carry them off, that’s not what Rebecca would have found.

 _I think you already answered yourself_ , the voice replied.

Rebecca took a third look at the monster and the dead man. The creature was holding the sailor’s hand so _softly_ with its almost-fingers. The sailor’s fingers were limp in its, but he didn’t seem to be pulling away with that hand so much as he was reaching towards the door with his other hand. The injury on the sailor’s face seemed to have come from a blunt object, and then there was the problem of the knife. The monster’s limbs appeared thin and sharp, dangerous as knives or spears, but not as clubs. And it seemed hard for the monster just to hold the man’s hand. What was the point of fumbling around with a knife when it already had comparable weapons attached to itself? The whole scene suggested another killer, maybe another dead man, or maybe someone no longer in the room.

Rebecca turned around to follow the dead man’s line of sight. In the vision, the door was still open; someone or something had shut it since. He was clearly reaching out for Second Mate Cordelia French. French must have been his “Delia.” Maybe he’d died telling her to pass something along, but a more likely addressee for that last plea - “tell ‘em…” - was right next to him. Did that make the monster “Liam”? That would imply a lot of familiarity. Then again, “Liam” might have been someone else dead, grouped with “Delia.” She’d check the book. Clearly, this man had died fighting. In context, it seemed like he was calling out to people he cared about with his last breath and saying that something was done. He was declaring things safe.

All those eyes on the monster were hard to read, but it didn’t look happy. It was bent low beside the sailor, as if trying to look at his wounds, or maybe to comfort him. She recalled that strange voice cooing, “ _shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh_ ,” in the memory of the sailor’s last words. It was injured itself, she realized, with a few-inch stump of what looked to be an entire extra limb cut off near its shoulder, and a similar stump on one hip. That was more than he’d have lost from shooting a single short spike. He was bruised along his neck and shoulder. And clinging to his body was…

Was shredded sash, and a vest eerily like the jacket of the barefooted man at French’s death. 

Olive skin. Matted dark hair. Those clothes. “This was the passenger involved in the mutiny,” Rebecca said, speaking slowly, as if that might somehow give both her and her companion enough time to process. “Somehow. Heaven only knows how.”

 _You really think it’s_ **_heaven_ ** _that knows?_ the watch asked. It was nice to hear some personality and feeling creeping back into his voice, even if the feeling was mostly just pure bewilderment tinged with vague disgust. 

“It’s just an expression.”

_I knew I was seeing something terrible. I didn’t know I was seeing… something like this. He can’t… that’s impossible._

“Says the sentient object that travels through time,” Rebecca reminded, surprised at how gentle the reminder sounded as it left her lips. The more incredulous the timepiece sometimes seemed, the more inclined Rebecca became to trust it. It wasn’t trying to convince her of some crazy fiction it was offering to her, she decided. It was trying to make sense of this almost as much as she was. “I think this means our monster didn’t come through the ceiling. He probably entered the room in the same way as the sailor. And I haven’t seen the fourth man before.”

The voice of the watch sighed. _I didn’t know when to tell you this, but… I think we missed something in the first scene._

Rebecca arched an eyebrow and stepped gingerly to the side, avoiding the blood and carnage as much as possible. She could feel the watch continuing to buzz and blaze and glow the way it did when she first approached a corpse, though the scene was still holding for now. It was probably all the remains strewn about this room. “Can you tell me what it is we missed?”

_Not exactly. I didn’t look there, because you didn’t, but there were more living people present somewhere in this part of the ship than just the four we saw._

She made her way over to the shattered window and carefully hoisted one leg and then the other over its bottom frame, careful not to catch on any glass, though she wasn’t sure if the glass in the scene would be able to cut her anyway. The ocean and sky beyond the railing were all vast, bright nothingness. But, fortunately, the actual railing was completely visible. Four or so segments of the railing had been knocked out from the deck side. It was easy enough to tell from the angle of the splintered wood. Bloodied white fabric was indeed snagged along the edges, and the curved trim of the fabric suggested that it had come from sleeves, maybe?

“How many men?” she asked. “Did you see?”

_I could feel two. Two other people alive and present._

“Above the captain’s cabin, I’d bet. Or dropping into it through the hole in the deck.” Rebecca took a deep breath and stared down at the shattered railing. One of them was back in the cabin. One of them had likely gone overboard here, probably not entirely of their own volition. “There was a coordinated effort to get something from the captain, and clearly it didn’t end prettily. But… maybe it did end well, by the standards of the people making it?”

_The sailor back in the cabin seemed… at peace, more or less. Not defeated._

“Exactly.” Rebecca slid up onto the railing, took a seat, and slid out the book. She’d already made up her mind as to what she needed to look into next, but first, she wanted to figure out what she could from the scene in front of her.

She immediately looked to the list of passengers and crew. She’d deal with the new face she’d run across in this scene later, but she had no possible name or reference for him yet. Instead, she scanned the list for the name “Liam.”

There was only one Liam: Liam O’Rourke, a topman, from Ireland. Was it possible that the “Liam” the dying sailor had mentioned hadn’t even been on the ship? Maybe, and she had to consider that, but there was a promising second name listed among the ship’s topmen: Andrew O’Rourke, also from Ireland. Could the shared surname be a coincidence? Again, something to consider. It wasn't exactly an uncommon name. But it all seemed like far too perfect of a coincidence if the Irishmen were truly unconnected. Rebecca slid out her pencil and tentatively jotted down “Andrew O’ Rourke?” next to the sketch of the red-bearded sailor with a gun.

Then she scanned the list of those aboard for people from France, or the Italian states, or maybe Spain. There were several, but three were officers, and one was a steward who surely would’ve been in uniform. An Italian topman and a French seaman remained, but she remained unconvinced that the barefoot man in the sash had been a sailor. No passengers were from any of the countries she’d immediately associated with the little she’d caught of the man’s accent.

But there _were_ Reveran passengers. Rebecca didn’t know much about Revera. It was mostly noteworthy for its textiles, its colorful foklore, and the fact that a dialect of Latin was still spoken in some regions as a living language. But she _did_ know that its official language was very similar to Italian. Of course, three of the four Reverans were men, so she couldn’t narrow it down to one man yet. But at least she now had just three names to work with: Prospero Verossi, Yusuf Alzoar, and Marcollus Serra. She pencilled in a mark by each name so she wouldn’t forget.

“Can you show me a memory within a memory?” Rebecca asked as she closed the book.

The watch considered for a moment. _If there are remains within the memory, I don’t see why not. I’ve felt like I’m on the brink of another moment all the while we’ve been in this one._

“Then show me how the blond man died.”

_Walk back to him._

Rebecca did, and held the watch out in front of her as she moved. When she got close enough, the watch rattled as fiercely as it had the first time, like it was about to shake itself apart.

 _He was the first here,_ the watch said. _Follow._

“Not ‘look’? What-” Rebecca’s question was cut off by a growing funnel, not of darkness, but of bright, unbearable light. She held the timepiece tight and closed her eyes.


End file.
